Tuesday 18 May 2010 16.29 EDT
First published on Tuesday 18 May 2010 16.29 EDT

Despite its embrace of "new politics", the coalition appears to be seeking to reduce the power of the part of parliament that has proved the most successful in restraining the executive. Over the last 11 years (since the bulk of the hereditary peers were removed) the House of Lords has been an effective means of ensuring that the Commons genuinely thinks again about proposals that go too far or undermine the values of our constitution. After the Commons passed the 42-day detention period, the Lords rejected it by a massive majority, and the government abandoned the policy.

The Lords was able to reject proposals like that because the government party did not have a majority, and if the two opposition parties opposed a measure they could be pretty sure of defeating the government. The opposition was aware of the need to ensure that the government got most of its business done; but if there were measures that the Lords felt went to the heart of our constitutional values – trial by jury and detention without trial, for example – it would hold out against the Commons.

The proposal for fixed-term parliaments, which involves a general election only if 55% of all MPs support a dissolution, is not a radical constitutional change. It is a fix pressed upon the Lib Dems by the Tories to ensure that, even if the Lib Dems leave the coalition, the Tories can't be forced to hold an election. All the opposition to the Tories in the new house only amounts to 53% of MPs. I support fixed-term parliaments, but for well over half the period since the second world war the country has been governed by a party that has more than 55% of MPs supporting it.

So this proposal would not have restrained many prime ministers from having an election to suit their party. And it is unlikely to restrain many in the future. And it contains no safety valve to deal with a parliament unable to form a sustainable government.

Before the coalition the Lords, if persuaded that the 55% proposal was the worst sort of constitutional gerrymandering, would have voted the proposal down. To pursue the matter now, the coalition would have had to use the Parliament Act, which allows the Commons to override the Lords by re-introducing the same bill in the next session.

But the chances of the Lords voting the measure down are much reduced with two of the three parties in coalition, making a built-in majority. At the end of last month, there were 704 members of the Lords (excluding those on leave of absence or barred from sitting through holding high judicial office), made up of 211 Labour, 188 Conservative, 72 Lib Dems, 182 crossbenchers, 25 bishops and 26 others.

On almost all issues, because many do not attend regularly and crossbenchers and bishops never vote as a block, the coalition can ensure victory with 180 votes. On a great constitutional issue it would be possible to defeat the coalition only with significant defections. So in the years of the coalition the house of parliament that has been able to stand up against a whipped Commons will be gravely weakened as a scrutiniser of the executive.

In pursuit of their aim of proportionality in the Lords, the coalition is going to create 100 peers for coalition parties – no doubt selected for their loyalty, and no doubt ensuring that the 55% proposal gets through. These peers will have the effect of ensuring not just that the Lords is weakened as an independent force, but that the hold of the executive on it will be near complete. We will retreat to the late 1950s when the Lords, totally in the hands of the Tories, with the Tory government down the corridor, hardly had a vote from one year to the next.

The coalition proposes a Lords elected by proportional representation, with grandfather rights for those already there. A committee (selected from whom and made up of whom I know not) is to be tasked with proposals to achieve this. The long grass beckons.

Whatever proposals for longer-term reform emerge the Lords in its current form will be with us for some time. Its independence from the executive is its strongest characteristic. With a coalition that undermines that independence, the government should be thinking not of how to ensure the death of that independence, but its preservation.

The coalition will no doubt ram its 55% proposal through parliament. A fix designed to ensure the Tories' survival in government, railroaded through a Lords made biddable by 100 new peers, does not feel like new politics to me.